Modeling the Synchronization of Multimodal Perceptions as a Basis for the Emergence of Deterministic Behaviors.

Living organisms have either innate or acquired mechanisms for reacting to percepts with an appropriate behavior e.g., by escaping from the source of a perception detected as threat, or conversely by approaching a target perceived as potential food. In the case of artifacts, such capabilities must be built in through either wired connections or software. The problem addressed here is to define a neural basis for such behaviors to be possibly learned by bio-inspired artifacts. Toward this end, a thought experiment involving an autonomous vehicle is first simulated as a random search. The stochastic decision tree that drives this behavior is then transformed into a plastic neuronal circuit. This leads the vehicle to adopt a deterministic behavior by learning and applying a causality rule just as a conscious human driver would do. From there, a principle of using synchronized multimodal perceptions in association with the Hebb principle of wiring together neuronal cells is induced. This overall framework is implemented as a virtual machine i.e., a concept widely used in software engineering. It is argued that such an interface situated at a meso-scale level between abstracted micro-circuits representing synaptic plasticity, on one hand, and that of the emergence of behaviors, on the other, allows for a strict delineation of successive levels of complexity. More specifically, isolating levels allows for simulating yet unknown processes of cognition independently of their underlying neurological grounding

Presuppositions in Context: Constructing Bridges

About the book: The First International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modelling and Using Context, Rio de Janeiro, January 1997, gave rise to the present book, which contains a selection of the papers presented there, thoroughly refereed and revised. The treatment of contexts as bona fide objects of logical formalisation has gained wide acceptance, following the seminal impetus given by McCarthy in his Turing Award address. The field of natural language offers a particularly rich variety of examples and challenges to researchers concerned with the formal modelling of context, and several chapters in the volume deal with contextualisation in the setting of natural language. Others adopt a purely formal-logical viewpoint, seeking to develop general models of even wider applicability. The 12 chapters are organised in three groups: formalisation of contextual information in natural language understanding and generation, the application of context in mechanised reasoning domains, and novel non-classical logics for contextual application